Why kids who aren’t poor are now getting free and reduced-price school lunches
It used to be that students from families with low incomes qualified for lunches that were either free or available at a reduced price. That’s still true — but now, new federal rules allow kids who aren’t poor at many schools to get the same thing.
The change in the rules means not only that more kids will get to eat free- and reduced-price lunch but that what had been broadly used for years as a proxy for poverty rates among schoolchildren will no longer be useful for that purpose. Policymakers and researchers will have to find another measure of poverty. As the Hechinger Report notes in this story:
Education researchers often look at whether an instructional technique works as well with low-income students as it does high-income students, for example. Without reliable poverty figures for each school, that kind of analysis will be inaccurate. Many programs, including billions in federal Title I dollars for disadvantaged students, are tied to lunch statistics. Philanthropic grants are given out this way, too. States and districts are scrambling to figure out how to allocate budget funds among schools without the precise school-lunch figures. New York City was so concerned about putting its federal dollars in jeopardy that it didn’t participate in free lunch for all this year. (Only children who are poor enough receive it).
Under the federal Free and Reduced-Price Lunch Program, which was established in 1946 during the presidency of Harry Truman, students whose families earned no more than 85 percent above the federal poverty line and below that amount could qualify. The percentage of students who qualified has been going up over the years, with some 38 percent in 2001-02 to at least 50 percent by 2011-12. That is different from the official poverty rate of children under 18, which rose to 23 percent in 2013.
New rules that went into effect this year allow for something called the “Community Eligiblity Provision,” which allows schools and districts to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students if at least 40 percent of them of them would have qualified by the old rules. Updated guidance released in April from the U.S. Agriculture Department, which administers the nutrition program, said that participating schools no longer have to require families to complete individual applications. (It was these applications that researchers and policy-makers had used to get data they found useful.) The guidance says:
First rolled out in pilot states beginning in School Year (SY) 2011-2012, CEP became available for nationwide implementation this school year. As a result, in SY 2014-2015, approximately 14,000 schools in more than 2,000 local educational agencies (LEAs) serving more than 6.4 million children elected to participate in CEP for its ability to both reduce administrative burden and increase access to school meals for children in low income communities. While Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is encouraged by the significant response, we know more children can benefit from CEP.
Why is the federal government doing this? As noted above, it will reduce paperwork for families and schools, but it will also help reduce the stigma that some children feel about eating in a government-funded program at school. You can read more about the program here. The ultimate cost of the program is unclear because nobody yet knows how many students will participate.
States with the highest percentages of students who qualified for free- and reduced-price lunch in 2012 included Mississippi, at 71.5 percent; New Mexico, at 68.5 percent; and Louisiana, at 67.1 percent.Why kids who aren’t poor are now getting free and reduced-price school lunches - The Washington Post:
Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.
